Ohio State gave its season-ticket holders the kind of home nonconference schedule that once made knitting a way to pass the time at Value City Arena.

The Buckeyes beat up on Albany, Missouri-Kansas City, Northern Kentucky, Long Beach State, Savannah State, North Carolina-Asheville and Winthrop by an average of 28.1 points. Today’s game against Chicago State should offer more of the same, especially after the players have had a week to ruminate on their home loss to Kansas last Saturday.

But as far as the level of competition the Buckeyes have faced having any bearing on how they will fare in the Big Ten season, which starts next week: That’s not likely.

Ohio State’s strength-of-schedule rating on CBSSports.com yesterday ranked 79th among 347 Division I teams. That was bolstered by games against Duke and Kansas, the top two teams in the RPI. Washington (97th) was the only other opponent in the top 100 (Marquette, the opponent in the canceled opener, ranks 96th).

But the Buckeyes’ strength-of-schedule standing at the end of their nonconference schedule the past three years — when they won at least a share of the conference championship each season — was even lower: 105th last season, 194th in 2011 and 257th in 2010.

Coach Thad Matta joked that if the theory were true that teams must play tough nonconference games to prepare for tough conference games, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich “never would have sent his top four players home and not played (them) against the Miami Heat” in November.

“There’s more to” preparing a team than playing high-end competition early in the season, Matta said. Popovich, he said, was “thinking May … thinking June (the playoffs) for the players.”

Matta is thinking March for his. It is not as important to him how good they are today as long as they are better than they were yesterday. Focusing on improving a day at a time has served his teams well.

“I think this basketball has gotten better” since the start of the season, Matta said before practice yesterday. “I think we’ve lost to the two best teams in college basketball. But that’s the thing we’re challenging our guys with right now: We have to play better basketball. We have to continue to get better. I think in both (losses), we’ve been right there. Now it comes down to we’ve got to make some plays defensively and offensively to win the game.”

Indiana coach Tom Crean said he and his staff “don’t spend a lot of time on the strength-of-schedule part of (scheduling opponents) as much as projecting where we think somebody’s going to be inside of that year. You try to look at statistics, you try to look at who they have coming back … and try to project as best you can.”

Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said he scheduled differently when he was at Siena. He had to enhance the midmajor program’s RPI ranking early in case it did not win its conference tournament and had to make a case for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

“You don’t need RPI strength in the Big Ten,” McCaffery said.

“You do need to challenge yourself outside of the league, but I think you have to be careful. It’s great to say we’re going to take ’em all on. But (how much you do that) is going to be a function of experience. What type of scorers do you have coming back? Do you think you’re mature enough, tough enough, to go on the road? I think you really have to be careful of overscheduling, particularly with a young team.”